IQ Scores Have Been Dropping For Decades And The Reason Is NOT Genetic

haidut

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I mentioned in a few other threads about the decline in intelligence and the reversal of the so-called "Flynn Effect" over the last 3-4 decades.
Flynn effect - Wikipedia

A few users commented that the drop in IQ (and SAT) scores is due to simply more people taking the tests and thus lowering the average score. The fact that the health of young people has been rapidly declining over the same period suggests that the trend is legitimate and not due to the so-called "regression to the mean".
This new big study makes the same claim and states explicitly that the effect is not explainable to genetics. Since the current view in hereditary biology is that IQ is mostly genetic, this result casts doubt on that view/theory as well. Interestingly, the study claims that increase in intelligence seen in the middle of the 20th century (Flynn Effect) was also due to environmental factor and not genetics. That further bolsters the idea that intelligence if fluid and environmental and not genetically driven.
Either way, the results of the study remind me of what Peat said in one interview - i.e. something like "maybe the develop world will soon become too stupid to pose any danger to the rest of the planet" and "questions of health and intelligence are necessarily questions about environmental quality and not genetics".

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/06/05/1718793115
IQ scores are falling and have been for decades - CNN

"...IQ scores have been steadily falling for the past few decades, and environmental factors are to blame, a new study says. The research suggests that genes aren't what's driving the decline in IQ scores, according to the study, published Monday."

"..."The causes in IQ increases over time and now the decline is due to environmental factors," said Rogeburg, who believes the change is not due to genetics. "It's not that dumb people are having more kids than smart people, to put it crudely. It's something to do with the environment, because we're seeing the same differences within families," he said. These environmental factors could include changes in the education system and media environment, nutrition, reading less and being online more, Rogeberg said."

"...Researchers have long preferred to use genes to explain variations in intelligence over environmental factors. However, the new study turns this thinking on its head. Intelligence is heritable, and for a long time, researchers assumed that people with high IQ scores would have kids who also scored above average. Moreover, it was thought that people with lower scores would have more kids than people with high IQ scores, which would contribute to a decline in IQ scores over time and a "dumbing down" of the general population, according to Rogeberg. Anyone who has seen the film "Idiocracy" might already be familiar with these ideas. In the scientific community, the idea of unintelligent parents having more kids and dumbing-down the population is known as the dysgenic fertility theory, according to Ritchie."

"...The study not only showed IQ variance between children the same parents, but because the authors had the IQ scores of various parents, it demonstrated that parents with higher IQs tended to have more kids, ruling out the dysgenic fertility theory as a driver of falling IQ scores and highlighting the role of environmental factors instead."
 

Sobieski

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The study is based on IQ in Norway. Food for thought;

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Seems importing populations with poor educational standards/attainment isn't explored by the article, but is something that is undoubtedly a factor.
 
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haidut

haidut

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The study is based on IQ in Norway. Food for thought;

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Seems importing populations with poor educational standards/attainment isn't explored by the article, but is something that is undoubtedly a factor.

Quite possibly, that may be a big factor for Norway. But I think the study controlled for that (partially). Also, the immigration does not explain the intra-family drop in intelligence - i.e. first child is the smartest and subsequent ones get a dumber and dumber.
 
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haidut

haidut

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do you think autism will hit the 50% rate in our lifetime ?

It's probably way more than 50% already. Most adults living the stressed, unstimulating, emotionally callous/deprived lifestyle of today's developed countries have some form of autism (which is something Peat's latest newsletter hinted at).
 

Atman

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it demonstrated that parents with higher IQs tended to have more kids
I highly doubt that. I will look into the study tomorrow.

There are so many dysgenic policies and technologies introduced in the last 70 years, that I believe they are the main reasons for the decline in intelligence.

Second to that is probably the mass immigration of people with a lower average intelligence, as others have already suggested.

Third are environmental factors (decline in food quality, pollution, TV, education ...).
 
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It's probably way more than 50% already. Most adults living the stressed, unstimulating, emotionally callous/deprived lifestyle of today's developed countries have some form of autism (which is something Peat's latest newsletter hinted at).

Where do you get ray peats newsletter?
 
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This guy thinks air pollution is causing a world wide decrease in IQ and that average world IQ will be 70 by 2050 and society will collapse

He makes a very good case near the middle in the section titled "possible causes for world-wide intelligence decline"
 

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x-ray peat

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This seems like more politicized science designed to soothe the anger of Norwegians and other "Nativists" whose countries are being flooded with immigrants.

The CNN article purposely confuses the issue of absolute IQ which is still believed to be primarily driven by genetics and the changes in IQ over time which the study claims is based on the environment.

"Researchers have long preferred to use genes to explain variations in intelligence over environmental factors. However, the new study turns this thinking on its head."

Not true
 
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haidut

haidut

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This seems like more politicized science designed to soothe the anger of Norwegians and other "Nativists" whose countries are being flooded with immigrants.

The CNN article purposely confuses the issue of absolute IQ which is still believed to be primarily driven by genetics and the changes in IQ over time which the study claims is based on the environment.

"Researchers have long preferred to use genes to explain variations in intelligence over environmental factors. However, the new study turns this thinking on its head."

Not true

If this was the only study with such findings, considering it focused on Norway, I would agree completely. Not only Norway, but Sweden, Finland and Denmark all have issues with assimilating immigrants. The recent movie "Girl with Dragon Tatoo" (set in Sweden) has several scenes where it shows rather directly the open contempt local Scandinavians feel against immigrants, and even Jews. The main villain in the movie gets his pickle tickled by killing "immigrant wh*res", as he himself said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/14/opinion/sweden-antisemitism-jews.html
https://www.politico.eu/article/swe...ty-undoing-peaceful-self-image-law-and-order/

However, the decline in intelligence is a worldwide phenomenon, spanning a much longer period, and immigration alone probably cannot account for the entire effect.
Why are IQ's Dropping On A WorldWide basis | HuffPost
"...Dr Nijenhuis studied the results of 14 intelligence studies conducted between 1884 and 2004 to come to his conclusion. Each study measured peoples’ reaction times – how long they took to press a button after being prompted. It is claimed that reaction time mirrors mental processing speed – so it reflects intelligence. They found that visual reaction times averaged 194 milliseconds in the late 19th Century, but in 2004, they had increased to 275 milliseconds. This would suggest that people have become less intelligent, they said."
 

x-ray peat

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If this was the only study with such findings, considering it focused on Norway, I would agree completely. Not only Norway, but Sweden, Finland and Denmark all have issues with assimilating immigrants. The recent movie "Girl with Dragon Tatoo" (set in Sweden) has several scenes where it shows rather directly the open contempt local Scandinavians feel against immigrants, and even Jews. The main villain in the movie gets his pickle tickled by killing "immigrant wh*res", as he himself said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/14/opinion/sweden-antisemitism-jews.html
https://www.politico.eu/article/swe...ty-undoing-peaceful-self-image-law-and-order/

However, the decline in intelligence is a worldwide phenomenon, spanning a much longer period, and immigration alone probably cannot account for the entire effect.
Why are IQ's Dropping On A WorldWide basis | HuffPost
"...Dr Nijenhuis studied the results of 14 intelligence studies conducted between 1884 and 2004 to come to his conclusion. Each study measured peoples’ reaction times – how long they took to press a button after being prompted. It is claimed that reaction time mirrors mental processing speed – so it reflects intelligence. They found that visual reaction times averaged 194 milliseconds in the late 19th Century, but in 2004, they had increased to 275 milliseconds. This would suggest that people have become less intelligent, they said."
I completely agree that environmental factors are lowering peoples intelligence. But despite what the CNN article implied, this still doesnt mean that environment is the primary determinant of IQ. Based on twin studies, genetics and not environment is generally considered to be the primary factor in determining overall IQ. This of course doesnt mean that a changing environment wont change peoples IQ, which is what these studies are showing.

My point was that there is an apparent policy in Europe to silence the critics of immigration, and it seems they will use any means they have to propagandize their public. It is well known that the average IQs of the source countries for immigrants is much lower than the receiving countries, so it is in the government's interest to come up with alternative reasons for why the IQs of their countries are falling. Environmental changes are obviously a factor but they pale in comparison due to changes in demographics. I am sure that they had to remove the influence of immigration status/native country to come up with the results they got.

This map has been posted the last time this came up but explains a lot of what I think is the primary driver of lowered IQs in all Western Countries.

iq_by_country.png
 
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x-ray peat

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Secular declines in cognitive test scores: A reversal
of the Flynn Effect


Another partial contributing factor to the recent decline
could be the ethnic composition of young Danes, specifically
the rising proportion who are immigrants or
their immediate descendants. te Nijenhuis, de Jong, Evers,
and van der Flier (2004) have reviewed data from the
Netherlands, showing that children of immigrants do

not generally perform as well on cognitive tests
as children who are ethnically Dutch, although they do
show improvements over first generation immigrants.
A recent unpublished study of Danish draftees has similarly
shown that immigrant groups (first or second
generation with Danish nationality) score below overall
averages on all of the four tests reported on here. The
proportion of such immigrants among the Danish male
18-year-old population rose from less than 1% in 1988 to
about 2.3% in 1998 and 5% in 2004 (http://www.
statistikbanken.dk).
 
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mt_dreams

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I can't really speak of the iq in scandinavian countries due to the whole immigrant/refugee issue, but it's quite clear that the whole of first world countries on average have lower cognitive abilities compared to 100+ years ago. easy points to look at are that many regions still have high levels of lead in their blood. i believe i read somewhere that there's at least 10 cities in the US that have higher levels then the people living in flint. with mothers passing on their lead (among other toxins & chemicals) via breast milk, we've essentially passed on our toxic load to every new generation. on top of that, with the introduction of 80k+ chemicals in the last century, one can safely assume some of these are effecting our mental abilities. with 90% of them not having much testing done, it's tough to know exactly which ones could be doing it.

I'm surprised that the scandinavian countries are having problems with refugees as I didn't think they were that religious. i can see why a place like italy is having problems due to religious conflict, but there has to be another reason for the northern countries. here in canada, there does not seem to be any issues with refugees, though the numbers coming in are much lower than some of the european countries. im thinking b/c canada doesn't really have an identity, other cultures are allowed to be who they are without much judgement as long as they follow basic morals. depending on what pocket/city you go to, you can expect to see street games of hockey, basketball, soccer, cricket, etc, depending on which culture lives in those areas. i will admit i haven't spent much time in low class/welfare pockets, so it might be different in those areas.
 

lampofred

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In response to the idea that immigrants are causing the decline in average intelligence, Dr. Peat has said IQ tests measure cultural assimilation and not actual intelligence. If anything, I've noticed people in rural areas or in developing countries are calmer and are much faster thinkers than people in developed countries who on the whole seem to be either sluggish, apathetic, and dull or jittery and hyperactive.
 

x-ray peat

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There is actually a lot of evidence that in many areas the US is cleaner today than anytime in the last 100 years. Remember everyone had lead water pipes and used leaded gasoline, there was no EPA or environmental regs, and rivers would often catch on fire due to industrial discharge.


I think the main issues today are pharmaceuticals and pesticides in the water and food supply and GMOs. Xenoestrogens are also a big problem in the environment but it was much worse 50 years ago with other pollutants. Another cause could be our dumbed down educational system, TV and social media, present website excluded of course.

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/24/us/epa-calls-us-cleaner-and-greener-than-30-years-ago.html
 
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Andman

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I'm surprised that the scandinavian countries are having problems with refugees as I didn't think they were that religious. i can see why a place like italy is having problems due to religious conflict, but there has to be another reason for the northern countries. here in canada, there does not seem to be any issues with refugees, though the numbers coming in are much lower than some of the european countries. im thinking b/c canada doesn't really have an identity, other cultures are allowed to be who they are without much judgement as long as they follow basic morals.

not sure if serious?
 

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